


10%

by Askance



Category: Preacher (TV)
Genre: Blood Drinking, Multi, OT3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-18
Updated: 2018-09-18
Packaged: 2019-07-14 00:37:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,925
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16029374
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Askance/pseuds/Askance
Summary: The lesser and darker part being: if he were very honest with himself, a practice he avoids at all costs, he would have to admit that he, Proinsias Cassidy, take-no-shit piss-and-vinegar son of Catholic Erin, is just a little teensy tiny itty bitty bit afraid of them.





	10%

_The first step is admitting you have a problem_ : he heard that first in a twelve-step meeting into which he blundered (very drunk) one night in Vegas, mostly on a mission to weather out the sunset, partly for shits and giggles, and it had a ring to it, that phrase—the only good thing he can say about that meeting, which dragged and offered nothing amusing and more in the way of very sad people, who could do very little for him gigglewise; but the _point is_ that he’s got a problem, he does, and his problem is Bonnie and Clyde over here, full of blood. That they are full of blood is not the issue per se; the issue is that they are full of blood and he loves them.

(What is there to love about Tulip and Jesse? _Be honest, now_. By anyone else’s standards, not much—they are violent, self-absorbed criminals wedged inside an endless crisis of codependency of which he is  becoming a not altogether reluctant part—thrice dependent? tridependency? Fuck it. His danger is that he tends very quickly to fall in love. It’s just his nature, something the vampire sickness never cured. What is there to love about them? Little things, mostly, like wit and curiosity and the timbre of Tulip’s voice when she’s frustrated.

The lesser and darker part being: if he were very honest with himself, a practice he avoids at all costs, he would have to admit that he, Proinsias Cassidy, take-no-shit piss-and-vinegar son of Catholic Erin, is just a little teensy tiny itty bitty bit afraid of them.)

(What use is rationale, anyway, at one hundred and nineteen years? Just a fact. Live with it. Let it make sense in its own time, if ever. The _point is._ )

His problem is that he loves them, absurdly, and when absinthe and fentanyl aren’t _quite_ hitting it he thinks about all their hot red rushing round underneath. His problem is that he wants it and doesn’t need it. No excuses. Just hunger. Just to be inside them that way, when he’s already been inside them every other way. Intimate, isn’t it, its own kind of craving?

His sweet dead sainted mother would rout him for fantasizing about it. Several deep and nasty layers of sin there, he’s sure, but doesn’t stop him daydreaming. How fresh. Christ. He’s heard rumors but never put it into practice, that to feed on someone you love, _truly,_ is bliss—orgasm—the greatest high—not that he has ever found someone to love like that, nor ever had the chance; sounds like a fairy tale more than a practical application. But he wonders about them, if. If.

 _If_ is a problem, too, and the only recourse is confession. And why not? Just to try. Just to see. 

So he tells:

 

* * *

 

 

Okay, says Tulip. She waves it off like a bothersome fly, purses her lips and shrugs as if he’s asked her to go and buy him cigarettes. I mean, ain’t gonna turn me—right?

No, he explains, tells her how it’s like snake venom, it’s something you learn to control very early—early for him being the fifties when he’d mellowed out a bit, after the war, you know—you grow into it, like rubbing your belly and patting your head at the same time. No danger, he swears, his stomach doing flips.

I guess it’ll hurt, says Tulip. But she’s soft about it, not a feather out of place, entirely unruffled. They’ve both slipped out leaving Jesse alone and snoring in bed to share a post-shag beer and the kitchen light in Denis’ apartment is buzzing like a frantic cicada. She looks at him for confirmation. Does it hurt?

He nods. But I try—he clears his throat. You know. I mean, it’s not _pleasant_.

Tulip hums. Her eyelids are heavy and she rotates her bottle around on its embossed bottom, tracks of wet condensation on the tablecloth.

You don’t _need_ it, huh, she says. You just—

Yeah.

If he’s blushing—is he? Can he?—he can’t tell, but he can’t meet her eyes, either; it’s like asking for spare change, an embarrassment, wanting something like that. Tulip fucks him like she’s doing him a favor, because, of course, she is, and he doesn’t know how to ask more of her, except to simply ask.

Aw, she says, smiling, that’s sweet. She creeps her hand across the table to rest on his while she finishes her beer and looks through into the hall, down which Jesse is asleep in damp sheets, waiting for them to come complete the circuit of his warmth on either side.

Sure, she says. Why not? If it’ll make you—you know—if it’ll make you happy.

Miss Tulip Up-For-Anything, he says, feeling nervous.

But not tonight, and not the next day, and not for a while, in fact, though he’s happy to wait, and there is the running-by of Jesse, and Jesse is cautious but for all his grandstanding he trusts; not that he could stop Tulip, anyway, when she puts her mind to it. And she insists on zero ceremony, says it makes her itch.

She nudges him with her shoulder one night when they’re cooped up on the couch and Denis is sleeping in his chair and the down-low TV is flashing _Nosferatu,_ which is fitting and kind of funny, she says. The hollow of her long throat catching the light and shade. She burrows backward into him and tilts her head and waits, her fingers rambling aimlessly across his arm where it’s tucked around her middle. At the other end of the couch her bare feet with red-painted toes relaxed.

Yeah?

Yeah.

She doesn’t make a sound, to her credit, though she flinches, and then she settles, and then relaxes, stretching her shoulder away to make room for him. Pulse wild against his tongue. He wants to close his eyes but it’s hard to tell his body to do anything—he’s buzzing to his fingertips already, feeling heady and warm and sleepy, the hot salt of her washing down his throat, kind of tart—oxidizing copper. His eyelids flutter ridiculously. Her hand moving back and forth on his arm, soothing, as much an act of her concentration as a sensation to ground him. He must be careful, must stay somewhat present, though all he wants is to drift off into the narrow point of focus where his teeth are piercing her flesh and exist in it where it is kind and blissful. Maybe he makes a noise, because she laughs a little, scratching her fingernails gently on his skin. You’re all good, baby, she says. All good.

Her breathing is deep and he listens, feels hard for the fluttering of her heart at the point where it’s too much, and when it skips a beat against his chest he unlatches and cannot keep himself upright, sagging back into the cushions while the holes in her throat drip and stain the white T-shirt she wears to bed, blooming like miniature flowers across the fabric. That’s Jesse’s shirt. She wavers, blinks, holds a hand up to press on the wounds and twists painfully to smile at him. She gets up, ruffles his hair, wanders unsteadily off he assumes for a washcloth to press on her neck or a glass of apple juice. Next time he’ll make cookies like they have at blood drives, he thinks. Snickerdoodles or some such. It’d be a riot. _Next time,_ he thinks, and his spine lights up with heat.

Jesse wanders in. Sees his mouth painted like a child experimenting with Mom’s lipstick and takes a beat.

Tulip? he says.

He nods. _Don’t be angry_ , he wants to say. _She offered_. But Jesse isn’t angry. That’s a change of scenery. When she comes back in with a rag held to her throat she smiles at him and he kisses her forehead and joins them on the couch, out, for once, of that black reverend get-up, softer, less angled, easier to touch. Tulip nods off on Jesse’s chest and slowly Cassidy comes back to life, blinking out of the kaleidoscope of the high, back into the real world where Jesse’s leg is thrown over his. He feels like his heart is flying out of his chest—floating somewhere.

 

* * *

 

 

Hey, says Jesse—cluing in, no doubt, to the way he is fitting his head into the empty space of Jesse’s shoulder, where he smells the most of sweat and sex—he whispers it, because Tulip is fast asleep with her head on his chest, her dark curls damp and her arm slung over them both, and he doesn’t want to wake her. Hey, he says, and raises an arm to let him get closer. Jesse’s fingertips on the shaved side of his head, twirling lazily through his hair in its catastrophic mop. He likes Jesse best well-fucked and relaxed, when he’s not _thinking_ so much, not daydreaming Armageddon scenarios, weighing the pros and cons of godhood. It doesn’t suit him. Flushed skin and cooling sweat, that’s what’s good. That’s Jesse. He wants to put his mouth all over him for the fifth time tonight. There goes his stomach, doing gymnastics again, sticking the landing. Jesse smells like an animal, like something chased down in the woods, humming blood and smoking adrenaline.

Go on, sugar, Jesse whispers.

He means it. No time wasted doubting it. His teeth go in like a knife through butter. Jesse’s blood is electric, and he would know, having sucked on more than a few live wires in his time, for the thrill and the burn, Jesse sparks up his tongue and comets down his throat and fireworks in his gut and leans against him, making soft noises, his hand crawling up to cradle Cassidy’s face, all his knuckles out at angles, fingernails digging into his scalp. Is that Genesis, he wonders, filling up his mouth like cold fire, or just Jesse, impossible? He wonders vaguely through the blossoming high what God’s blood tastes like and then throws that thought away—doesn’t matter—he’s got this, all this, the long, blissful ten percent he can safely pull through his teeth before Jesse gets woozy. Easy there, Jesse hushes, but doesn’t pull away, his big hand across Cassidy’s cheek. Easy, alright. For a moment he just rests there, lodged in his throat, eyes closed, colors spiraling across his eyelids, colors he doesn’t have names for, magic things. He’s anxious. It’s like the edge of drowning. Too much. But if he moves the spell will shatter. Rest in it a minute. Don’t drink. Just rest. It’s Jesse and the tight drawbridge of his muscle, and down a little further Tulip. Tulip he can reach with his hand, so he does. There. Alright. Everything alright.

He’s half-blind, and not in the fun way. Jesse drags a thumb across his mouth and smears blood away. Okay? he says. No, not okay. Overwhelmed. He just needs to lay his head down, remember his own name for a minute. No, don’t get up. You’ll wake Tulip. Stay here with me. Doesn’t say that, doesn’t have to. He wraps a hand around Jesse’s arm and anchors him.

Okay, says Jesse. Alright.

Cassidy mutters something unintelligible even to himself. Tries again: Jess.

You good there?

Think so. Hey.

But Jesse kisses anything he might have been saying right out of him. Fine then. He’s bleeding, that’s a problem.

You’re bleeding, he says.

Yes, I am, says Jesse.

**Author's Note:**

> for sweet tania and the pals in our discord <3


End file.
